them.”
“So?” Gonji affected a coy archness. “I believe I’m educated enough in your worship to make such comment. But no matter....” He considered something, nodded resolutely. “If you refuse to help, maybe I’ll go back to Vedun and tell everyone what kind of a...thing they harbored.”
Dangerous territory. Simon began ambling toward him unsteadily, mayhem stirring in his eyes of flaming iron.
“I can remedy that right now, infidel,” he grated. “I can tear your wagging tongue from your throat.”
Gonji stopped and steeled himself, returning Sardonis’ wilting gaze. “Ah, intimidation—the bully’s stock in trade. You think you can frighten me the way you frighten other men?” Wisdom. Although the bold words had caused Simon to halt and study him closely, Gonji changed the subject without transition: “Will you help these people?”
“Nein.”
“Will you help them for protecting your secret all this time, for suffering because of your vendetta?”
“They care nothing for me; I care nothing for them. They hate me, as do all other men.”
“Nonsense!” Gonji roared. “You hate yourself, what you are, but you can’t deal with it like a man so you punish others for your guilt. Will—you—help undo the trouble you’ve made for them?”
“What’s happened has happened—I’m not to blame. What about your meddling, slope-head?”
The samurai bridled at the insult. “I’m trying the best I know how, using whatever power I can claim to help. You’re sitting imperiously in a cave and slithering out at night to satisfy your bloodlust—Christian! Is this what your faith means to you? The prophetess spoke of you as the Wrath of God. I look at you and what do I see—a symbol of impotence. Even the priest Dobret told me to tell you to help.” Simon froze, taken aback by the statement. “Hai,” Gonji continued, “it was he who became my last link in the journey which led to you. He said that I should enlist your power against the evil that’s descended here, and that you should avoid personal vengeance.” His voice trembled slightly in delivering the half-lie. But conviction rushed back fast; the priest couldn’t have known what would become of this business, and surely he would have urged assistance.
Simon emitted a small gasp. “By the Christ and all the saints—I swear that Tralayn’s restive spirit has infused itself in you. Don’t you understand—any of you—that what you ask of me is utter madness? Leave me be! Leave me alone with my shameful curse before it destroys you all!”
Deadlocked, stubbornly determined each in his way, they stood not ten feet apart, expressions set like treasure-vault doors.
Gonji knew he was defeated, his blustering performance failing him, his appeals to reason muddled and ineffectual, his last-ditch effort at trenchant emotional probing unable to penetrate this enigmatic being’s lifetime conditioning of self-centered defense. He sighed at length and voiced something that had been nagging him.
“All-recht. I’ve wasted enough of my time on you. But something bothers me—”
“I’ve nothing more to say to you,” Simon stated flatly, turning his back to him and starting for the cave. “Take your gutless animal and ride off.”
Gonji raised his voice, a sarcastic quality seeping in. “I know that the chains in the cave are broken, and the full moon is scant nights off. Yet you stay. What are you planning to do on the Night of Chains?”
Simon halted, his shoulders bunching with tension, the hair at his neck bristling eerily in the moonlight. “What I plan,” he said haltingly, “is no concern of yours, infidel.” He stepped toward the cave again, more deliberately now, the limp marring the smoothness of his gait.
Gonji’s wrath seethed within him like a riptide, to be so dismissed. “So?” he cried. “Then you’ll continue to skulk around like some kind of a night-fiend, kill whom you please, and slink back to your cave, neh? That’s very gallant of you. Meanwhile, others will be put to the sword for your crimes. My, what a hero! And then on that night—on the full moon—you’ll give the beast his head—” His voice rose in irate pitch, crashing through the bleak space between them until Simon turned, an ugly grimace on his countenance. “—and there’ll be kills a-plenty, you dung-eating bastard!”
Might as well finish it....
Gonji’s eyes narrowed as Simon stalked him now with teeth grinding. “These people don’t need monsters to help them. They need men.”
The air filled with ozone as a terrible arc of lightning shattered the sky above the hills, and a hot blast of wind buffeted Gonji’s face just ahead of the man’s charge.
“I’m not a monster, you yellow devil!”
And suddenly the samurai was falling back, sword drawn, against the other’s vicious attack. Simon’s short blade lashed at him with propeller fury, a crude, emotion-charged power behind the broad, wild strokes.
Despairing, uncertain, Gonji gave ground, slipping and deflecting the mighty blows with deft two-handed parries. Simon’s rudimentary berserker style, all cursing and animal strength, repeatedly offered openings by which Gonji might leave him unlimbed; or so it seemed—the return speed of his sword arm was remarkable.
Yet Gonji found his head filled with conflicting thoughts, the enemies of the ken-jutsu fencer. He could not empty his mind, relax, and allow instinct free rein. He had lost. Failed, in his intent in coming here. And the mocking thought that he had forged no alternative to failure recurred, staying his thews. For he had not come here to kill this mysterious being, the possible object of his time-honored quest.
But neither had he come to this place to die....
Wicked blue sparks showered the battleground as the blades sang off each other, and Gonji pressed an attack of his own aimed at breaking the tall man’s frenzied resolve. Somehow he had to bring this senseless engagement to an un-fatal end. He must disarm Simon, wound him if necessary.
But first and foremost he must remain alive himself. A sensation of bone-deep weariness responded to his need for renewed strength and second wind.
Gonji leapt back a pace, whirling the Sagami in a flashing figure-eight of deadly steel, flicking the katana from one hand to the other with an effortless grace intended to distract, to divert, to intimidate his opponent with the masterful skill the motions bespoke.
Still Simon advanced. Slashing, growling, his unschooled but effective technique losing nothing of its surging, predatory energy. His eyes of chipped silver bored into Gonji’s.
The samurai tried a new tack: He stood his ground, the Sagami at middle guard before him, and attempted to address Simon’s whirling blows with small efficient parries alone. But the passive stance failed him; Simon’s brutish power tore through each parry in such a way that Gonji was quickly forced to fall back bodily or be struck by the barely deflected strokes. He could hear the fierce whinnying of the roncin at his back now. Made out the pounding thumps of her hoof-falls and knew his danger of being trampled—
With a spinning high parry, he twisted Simon’s broadsword over his head and spun around the tall man, passing his opened ribs without riposting. Now Simon’s back was to the mare as he half-turned to reengage. She cried out in fear of his demonic presence.
“There!”
